Chapter 2 – Haunting Guilts
With one part of his mind thinking he deserves this and the other wanting to escape, Vito racks his mind to settle on a course of action. There’s a knock at his door. A letter is then slipped under it as Vito approaches the door. He opens the door to find no one outside beside the shadows that “walk” the streets. After closing the door, he looks at the mysterious letter. The sender didn’t identify themselves. They only left the address to an amusement park that’s not too far from Vito.
He then opens the letter and reads it aloud, “Come to the amusement park on the lake if you want to find a way to pay for your past. You don’t have to of course. You can always turn around. Your sins are not too great, so why should you have to pay such a high price to get rid of them? You can still come if you want, but always remember that you can always turn around and take an easier path.”
The initials N and M are at the bottom along with Vito’s last name after each first name initial. He instantly recognizes it as his parents. The letter isn’t written the way his parents write nor is it worded in the way they talk, but he still decides to go to this amusement park. The part of the letter that talks about turning around is just a temptation to ignore this chance to pay for his past in his mind. Vito came all this way to run away from his past and now it has caught up to him in some supernatural way. Now that he has the opportunity to pay for it, he wants to pay in full so that it will be completely erased.
The town is still as empty as it was in Vito’s dream. Shadows are the only thing that populates it and ashes still fall from the sky.
“What was that cloaked thing from before?” Vito asks himself, “Was it my reaper who’s after me because of what I’ve done?”
His question will have to stay unanswered right now as he approaches the amusement park called the Crimon and Azure. It looks similar to an amusement park from his hometown. It’s empty like the rest of the town except for the large rat mascot costumes. Some sit on benches while others stand upright in certain vendors like the games and food stations. Some are males while others are females. Vito curiously pokes the costumes.
“Hey,” he says to it in a shaky voice.
The amusement park advertises the male rats as Ricky and the female ones as Becky while the smaller ones are their children. Curious, Vito takes the head off the costume and finds out that it’s hollow. He then puts the head back on and hits himself for taking such a stupid course of actions, but at least he feels relieved. There’s not much in the amusement park to find, so he goes to the end of the boardwalk and looks out at the lake. He remembers one of the times he went to the amusement park in his hometown of Hillside City.
Vito is the youngest of five children of two of the most reputable people in town. His father was a boxer and his mother was a doctor. Because of his parents, he lived a very comfortable life. In their summer visit to the amusement park on an island near the city, Vito and his brother looked out at sea to enjoy the view. Since the two were alone, Vito got the idea to push his brother off the railing he was sitting on. The siblings liked to play fight with one another, so this was his chance to at his brother and so he pushed his brother off the railing. Mere seconds passed before he regretted his decision. Vito dove into the water to get his brother out of the water and swam him to safety. He apologized profusely and offered to do or give his brother anything he wanted, but the brother didn’t mind the harmless prank. In fact, his brother swam better than Vito did, so his brother was doing most of the swimming back to land. Vito’s brother laughed it off and told the rest of the family what happened. Thinking that he’ll be scored, Vito apologized again even though his parents and siblings laughed. The prank was shrugged off and the family enjoyed the rest of the day together.
After the lifelike flashback, Vito blinks his eyes a couple times to make sure that he’s still in reality. He puts his concentration back on his goal and searches the amusement park for answers. There’s a stage in the park that has several rat animatronics on it. Behind it, there’s an employee only entrance that he decides to take a look in. He quietly enters it in case someone comes around. In the backstage area, he finds a basement door that is slightly covered by a wooden board. After removing it, he goes into the basement to find an animatronic repair station. This makes him remember the time he snuck into a similar area in the amusement park back home.
It was a school trip and Vito was with his friends. They’ve heard of the old urban legends about kids being kidnapped and killed in the amusement park as part of someone’s revenge plot. The amusement park had to close and reopen years later to shake off this bad reputation. Anyways, his friends and he sneak into the backstage area of the performing stage and come across a secret basement. In the secret basement, they find a bunch of spare animatronic parts plus a ton of decapitated robot parts. They also find suspicious black stains on the floor, which could be bloodstains. The room did smell funny after all. The kids didn’t want to find out and left the backstage area without alerting anyone. Feeling guilty about doing what he wasn’t supposed to do, he tells his teacher when they aren’t around his classmates. The teacher asks him if it was his idea and if anybody got hurt both of which he denies. The teacher then tells him that’s it’s okay and he should just forget about it since it wasn’t a big deal. Vito then walks out of the backstage area just as the animatronics come online and sing their songs on stage. The rest of animatronics activate and start walking around the place advertising what’s at their stations. Some of the ones that aren’t at a station walk around in preset paths and ask no one if they want to take pictures with it.
Somewhat unnerved, Vito cautiously continues to search through the amusement park for answers. He makes to the right side of the docks. There, he can see a lighthouse in the distance. This sight makes him remember his first date. His Aunt Harley, who was also the chief of police in Hillside City, taught Vito about love. She told him to be obsessed with his love and to do everything in his power to make them stay happy. To disappoint the love of your life or to make them sad is one of the worst things you could do to them. Vito took his first date to the amusement park for a decent time out. While looking out at the lighthouse, the girl notices that something of hers was pickpocketed and stolen. She gets upset, which makes Vito upset as well. He hastily tries to offer her everything he can. This somewhat frightens her, but it also makes her sympathize with him, which made her want to stay with him in order to protect him. This is how he met his wife.
This memory makes him feel happy, but his mess up spoils it a bit. He then shakes the feeling off and realizes that he’s holding something in his hand. It’s the ring he gave his wife. He threw it away after she died, and he throws it away again except it appears on his finger after it is thrown. The feeling of the ring on his finger reminds him of his failures and the horrible things he’d done. Seeing that he can’t get rid of it, he figures that this is the thing the letter told him about and he feels unsatisfied.
“What a waste of time,” he says aloud.
All of these flashbacks and returning feelings exhaust him, so he goes to leave the amusement park. Before he leaves, a rat animatronic begins to chase him at full speed until he rushes out of the gate. As he watches the animatronic go back, it becomes clear that it was just going along its set path. He calms down and laughs at himself for falling for it before bumping into a rat behind him. It holds out another letter, which has a variety of address on it.
The letter says, “Come to these addresses if you want to pay the price for your past. I still don’t get why you’re so hard on yourself. Your venial sins might turn into mortal ones if you don’t stop. You can always turn around and go back. Your family might not be waiting for but there are always new people who will accept you. The choice is yours.”
This letter is signed by his wife, child, and the name he had in mind for his unborn child. When Vito looks back up, he sees that the rat animatronic has disappeared, but now he’s more worried about what will happen later. He goes to the first of the locations written on the envelope regardless of what the letter warns because he knows what he did, and he knows he has to pay.
The theme song I have in mind for this story. The Tide Began to Rise - Demon Hunter.
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